COMMENT | All of a sudden there seems to be a lot of concern about fake news. Fake news, it would appear, is a bit like those fake designer handbags, T-shirts and watches you get in Petaling Street.

There you get the cheap, badly-made stuff which are so obviously fake that you can disregard them almost instantly. Then, there is the stuff that’s kind of okay, which don’t quite have the detailing and lustre of the real things, which can be fine if you just want something serviceable.

Finally, there are the high-end “genuine fakes”. This are virtually indistinguishable from the real things, because you can pass them off as genuine. Malaysians, it seems, can’t tell the difference. More to the point, they seem pretty much not to care.

At the risk of sounding harsh, maybe part of the problem is that over the years our news has been so curated and dumbed down that we’ve become accustomed to rubbish news.

With few exceptions, our press have become the dumping ground for commercially-driven press releases, self-aggrandisement by politicians and other celebrities, and an endless litany of often tragic disasters, which in hindsight could have been prevented with better enforcement, greater accountability and higher duty of care on the part of public officials.

Then, there are the issues about which we simply have blinkered vision - like religion and race - because any rational discourse has just become impossible without someone calling us racist, unpatriotic, anti- (fill-in-blank-as-appropriate) or just telling us that if we don’t like it, we can leave the country.

Along the way, we Malaysians can pride ourselves on having developed acute antennae for reading between the lines. A bare denial is usually taken to mean that the thing actually happened and if that seems too impossible, then some approximation of it did. Fudging and poor communication by anyone with influence or in a position of power gives rise to the kind speculation that causes fever-pitch levels of paranoia normally reserved for die-hard conspiracy theorists.

It's not just Malaysian, but global

Over the years, we’ve become such experts that we can join the dots to create just about any picture we like. But really, we shouldn’t feel bad about this at all. This is not a Malaysian problem, it’s a global one.

One of the more ominous consequences of the constant and almost ubiquitous stream of news, views, and entertainment, is that we’ve had to resort to filters.

There simply aren’t enough hours in a day to keep abreast of what all your friends are posting on social media and still find enough time to eat, sleep and go to the loo, never mind actual face-to-face engagements and maybe working for a living.

To help us cope, social media sites very kindly filter what we see, based on what we have commented on, searched for or responded to in the past. As a result, many of us now inhabit cyber-silos. It’s a vicious cycle where we only get the news and information we agree with, then share and comment on it to other people who are think, behave and react just like us.

In 1843, Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses, a means by which the power-elite kept the rakyat docile and obedient to the status quo through promise of a glorious afterlife.

Social media is by far more insidious. The promise of popularity, celebrity and wealth is in the here and now. One doesn’t actually have to be any good at anything other than a rapacious capacity for self-promotion.

Conversely, we have seen the rise of cyber-bullying, spamming, trolling and hate-speech, all mostly undertaken through pseudonyms and fake identities that are virtually untraceable, and for which hardly anyone ever gets caught.

Having it both ways

The powers-that-be want to have it both ways. If no less than the president of the United States can play free and easy with the facts, can you possibly blame us lesser mortals of jumping on the bandwagon? The examples are numerous. Everyone knows there are lies, damned lies and statistics, so what’s wrong with fudging the numbers over how many people attended your inauguration?

Don’t like how the political tide is turning? No problem, why not just accuse your predecessor of tapping your phone illegally? If you get caught, you can simply excuse yourself by saying you “misspoke”.

Everyone makes mistakes, no? What difference does it make anyway? Those who support you will insist it is the truth and those who are against you? Well, they are just troublemakers anyway. Let’s make more laws and regulations so we can just lock them up.

The real danger of fake news isn’t so much that it’s just blatantly false. (Mind you, it can be disheartening to discover that Bill Gates isn’t going to donate a dollar to some starving child every time you share that WhatsApp message, or that AirAsia is not giving out free tickets because you took part in an online survey, and really you need to stop checking the tread on the soles of your shoes to find hidden messages that prove aliens are real.)

The real danger is that we don’t really care if something is false if it fits with our overall concept of what is true.

There was a time when news, by its definition, was neutral and balanced. No more. Given the sheer volume of news out there, producers of news now have to compete, not just to be seen but also shared, and commented on. As a result, headlines have become ever more sensational and divisive.

Just take a look at the comment section of any controversial news item. We con ourselves into believing we are discussing it, but in reality, all we want to do is spew our little dose of witty commentary or vitriol then sit back and watch the likes mount up.

It’s hardly surprising that more and more people are simply disengaging from the national narrative, when it’s so much easier to lose yourself in Tintu-Mon and what the latest fashions are. If we are to move forward as a nation we need to mend fences and build bridges. We need to find reasons to work together and come up with real solutions to the issues that impact us all.

Malaysians currently hold the record for being the most social-media engaged people on the planet. Maybe we should aim to be more socially engaged. Just imagine what we could accomplish if we spent some of those three hours a day that we currently spend on social media doing something more constructive.

Very slowly now, put that phone down and go talk to one person near you that you’ve never bothered to get to know. It might be your next-door neighbour, or the makcik from whom you buy your lunch every day. Just go and talk, lah. You can always post about it on Facebook tomorrow.

SHEENA GURBAKHASH is a writer and communications specialist.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.